Monday, November 17, 2008

Bless You

My in-laws were very traditional, and so when my wife-to-be (Sarah) and I got engaged, we went to visit her parents to ask for their blessing.

Because they were Catholic and I wasn't (and remain not), I knew what their only question was going to be: Would we baptize and raise our children Catholic?

That, is it turned out, was not the only question, though it was the only question for which I'd prepared an answer.

We visited my in-laws on a Sunday, and I'm sure they knew why we were visiting, since we'd just been there a week before (they lived about 45 minutes from us). We sat around their table, and I started talking. Nobody else said a word, so I kept talking.

They stared. I talked. I talked about how I felt about Sarah, the life we'd talked about having together, our plans, everything. Finally, I'd run out of things to say.

My future mother-in-law asked the children-Catholic question, and I was ready: when that fat pitch came over the plate, I knocked it out of the park. I thought I was home free.

Then Sarah;s father, a retired Air Force colonel who had his gruff side, surprised me.

"Will you," he asked with a slight bit of darkness in his voice, "support her in the style to which she's become accustomed?" Then he thought about her teacher's salary. "Actually," he added, "would you do a little better than that?"

I assured him I would do my best. So far, so good.

(As an aside, when Sarah's older sister got engaged her fiancee was so nervous when visiting my in-laws to seek my father-in-law's blessing that he followed my father-in-law into the bathroom. My father-in-law told him that if he waited outside they could converse in a moment, but there was more pressing business at hand.)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

David, As I am reading this, I have just had a flasback to November 11, 2005 when PJ, my intended had the very same conversation with my conservative Jewish father - over the phone as we lived in Maryland and my parents lived in NJ. The retelling of that conversation nearly made me want to die. After PJ recovered from his shock of the question, he thought to himself, 'What lifestyle? Pizza Hut and a pitcher of beer (our first date) a cheap apartment and a junky car?' He figured that he could probably do better than what I was already doing on my own so, he said, 'Well, yes Mr. Bialow, I think I can keep her in the lifestyle she has become accustomed, and hopefully make her life even better.' My father was satisfied. The next day, the proposal was delivered to me and I accepted. Thank you for the great laugh today!